It wasn't many days now, soon they would reach one of the fabled states of the west. The glorious city of Orglas, or the proud Yandras.
They had all heard so much about them, how the people had power, how the people were protected.

In the sand seas and the deserts, the only protection one could have was the protection of the gun you were holding and your arm which carried it. But he wanted more.
Jogh was a father of two, it was close to three, but the third child died soon after birth after mysterious circumstances. His wife Maria slept in the bed in the back of the house truck together with his two children, Moraven and Djorn.

He glanced back and made a small smile, his sunburnt almost brown skin was coarse and rough, with a few warts on his left cheek.
Jogh drove the vehicle over the calm sand dunes, the sun was high in the sky and they had gotten through the cannibal tribes delta. It should be smooth driving all the way to the goal.
Jogh checked the compass again, he was going the right way. The compass needle gently vibrated from the movement of the vehicle and its engine. While also swaying slightly.
He smiled again, but was suddenly alerted when the needle began to sway more violently, it even swung around once clockwise and twice counterclockwise and then began wildly showing all sorts of bearings in violent jerks.

Jogh tried concussive maintenance with the palm of his hand on the base of the compass. It just kept jumping around.
He was spooked, but figured there must be some old world building somewhere messing with it.
Then he saw it, from the west. The entire horizon was a wall, easily a kilometer tall, spewing purple lightning which danced and crackled periodically all over its surface. It was an electrostorm.

-"Shit." Jogh expressed, then scanned the close area for some cover. None. The last thing he had passed was some cliffs, but that was almost an hours drive back, there was no time.

-"Maria!" He yelled, waking his wife.
-"What?" She wondered while wiping her eyes, she knelt next to him and was going to say something when she saw the storm.
-"I see what you mean hun!" She yelped and ran to the door where their gear hung. Shortly followed by Jogh whom had turned off the engine.

They hastily put on goggles, worn green and brown ponchos and bandanas covering their mouths. They hastily began to toss ropes over the truck and secured it in place with spikes with broad blades on them to get grip in the sand.
The storm was closing quickly, just seconds after securing the ropes, a job that took less than five minutes, the massive storm slammed into the area.
Sand was swirling everywhere, in the brief time it took to get inside several centimeters of sand had built up in the doorway. But alas, they were safe.
Moraven crept out from her hiding spot and held a candle in her palms. It was dark in the truck and the family huddles close around the candle which Maria lit with a long necked lighter.
The family had weathered electrostorms before, they were worse than sandstorms, since if you had any fancy electronics, like a radio, or a image screen you needed to turn them off, lest the lightning fry them.
But they didn't have such fancy things. Jogh used to have a fancy talking box, but he traded it to afford the truck, among other things.

Jogh actually liked these family moments, just sitting together in the dark and watching a candle. Sometimes they hummed songs, sometimes they talked. Sometimes they just sat silent.
A slight tickle, at first he ignored it as built up stress. The cannibal tribes sure had given him some stress, but when Djorn said.
-"Dad, what is going on." He could not ignore it any longer.
Both he and his wife was getting worried as the vibration grew in intensity, first to a small rumble, then to what resembled a constant earthquake.

Plates fell from the cupboards, bouncing on the counter. His favorite mug fell and broke in half... again.
Jogh stood up and walked to a window, looking out he saw something vast, looming.
They seemed to be in a cave... a moving cave. With a sudden and violent crash something slammed into the rear of the truck sending it spinning 180, it almost fell over. His entire family screaming.

Then it calmed down, as quickly, no. Quicker than it had begun the rumbling ceased, the truck was inside the cave now, there was still the howling of the wind outside but the echoes proved that the area was different outside. It was also much much darker, Maria managed to reignite the candle, it was then they realized all the lightning strikes were distant now. Usually they were all over, but this cave or whatever it was absorbed it.
Jogh got paranoid, he grabbed his makeshift crossbow and leaned on the door, his family hiding beneath the table.
It took almost a minute, but in the dark wind outside he could hear footsteps, calm footsteps closing in on his mobile home.
Then they stopped right outside. It was silent for a while...

-"Requesting entrance." A strange metallic voice rang out from the other side of the door. Jogh almost got an heart attack, but after violently jerking back he regained his posture and held the door closed.
-"Requesting entrance... please." The voice spoke again, but the last word had a really strange vocalization which went from a deep sound to a higher pitch in a way no normal human spoke.
Jogh had little idea what to do, it wasn't cannibals though, they were never out during the storms. Motor gangs? Same with them.

-"Who... who are you?!" Jogh yelled nervously through the door. Maria was whispering complaints to Jogh whom now instantly regretted speaking.
-"I am Em kay i vee. Nabushan engineer corps." It spoke. Jogh's first thought was 'engineer what?' Did he say Kay Ivy? Odd name.
The stranger didn't seem openly hostile, perhaps he's suffering in the storm.
-"I'm gonna open the door." Jogh yelled, training the crossbow on the opening as he slowly turned the handle with his thumb on the unlock plate, slowly making a small opening which he could peek out of.

In the distance he saw what appeared as strange broad pillars which were thicker at the bottom, sand was obscuring the vision and as he slowly opened the door more he saw the person who had been speaking, or rather the thing.
Jogh screamed and fell backwards, accidentally fully opening the door briefly showing the visage of a [url=https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/6e/f5/df/6ef5dfd4c597cbc8623429afd3a82220.jpg]humanoid machine[/url] with a head resembling a security camera before the candle was blown out by the swirling sand. The entire family screamed as a lightning bolt struck closeby outside.
With panicked kicks Jogh managed to kick the door close and back off to lean against a sofa and trained the crossbow at the door with a distressed heavy breathing.

This wasn't a cave, it was the underside of a vehicle!

[hider=Another point of view]
MK IV didn't understand civilians, how could he? He'd never gotten a program package designed to properly communicate and handle them. That was the job of the AI administration core upon the KR 112. Which sadly had the least chance to survive the emp strike so long ago. Nothing was salvageable from its systems.
All he had to go on was the basic system for military handling of civilian personnel. And his advanced logic processors to try and discern logical ways of speaking and acting. Sadly humans were far from logical at times and rather difficult to make sense of.

But he still felt bad about accidentally running over the civilian recreational vehicle, he just felt happy that he didn't drive a few metres to the left, then the entire family would have been crushed beneath the tracks.
He thought no more of it. He didn't like the thought of killing civilians. At least he thought he felt so, it was the only logical answer to the automated logic strings that appeared in certain situations, if not to emulate feelings MK IV knew not what they were supposed to be for.

He had tried his best gain access through diplomacy, he even tried twice and did his best to emulate a friendly gesture. Humans liked to alter their pitch when speaking to express themselves, so he tried the same.
Seeing how they had responded MK IV assumed they had not understood the notion. It was difficult.
In the end he didn't really need to enter the vehicle.
[/hider]

-"The MHCM is sorry for the property damage it has done, we hereby attempt to compensate." The voice outside spoke, then slowly walked off.
Jogh didn't understand a thing, property damage? Compensate? He looked at his wife who looked equally confused.
Djorn was crying and Moraven was burying her head in her knees with the blanket over her head.

Outside a loud thud was heard, followed by several very heavy sets of footsteps. Mechanical pistons hissed and clanked as at least three... things moved about and began doing things to their home. The truck was briefly lifted in the back, some sort of drill was heard and perhaps a saw revved up and began cutting.
Jogh feared the worst, they were trying to cut their way in. But why not the door? The machine man could easily smash its way in, these other things sounded way bigger than that one.

The truck was gently set down, the heavy footsteps then walked off to where the massive thud was first heard.
Then the rumbling began anew, the shaking was almost as bad as the first time, their home shook and they all prayed to their ancestors, some sort of god, anything really to save them from death.

Which never came.
The storm had eased, while it was still bad it was light outside again and in the distance the rumble disappeared with the storm.
With an amazed glee Jogh hugged his wife and his kids, they were safe.
After some time the weather was like nothing had happened, they even went outside to look how bad their vehicle had fared.

It was evident that something had smashed into the rear end, dragged it around and broken the rear axle. What was strange though was that the damage had been mostly fixed with fresh weld seams and a new steel plate here and there.
Jogh wasn't going to question the sense of it all, some sort of divine power had watched over them that day. So he just clasped his chest and whispered.
-"Thank you." To whatever had saved him from doom.
-"Jogh, i got the anchors, i don't like these tracks." Maria said while pointing at the ground, there was undeniably massive tracks in the sands from some sort of vehicle, easily several roads wide.
-"I agree, let's get out of here! I don't want to run into that again." Jogh said with a serious tone to Maria, his initial glee from surviving had passed and now he felt paranoid.

Off to Orglas, the city in the west.

[hider=MK IV]
The electrical storm was getting annoying, while its lightning helped charge the capacitors the sand got absolutely everywhere. It would be a nightmare to rid all of it from the pistons.
But as long as the KR 112 kept driving it would keep going. MK IV had tried stopping before to try and weather the storms, but contrary to what he calculated the filter systems worked better if the machinery kept going.

But it was going east, KR 112's course was further north so it would exit the storm soon enough.
MK IV studied the saved imagery of the family, trying to figure out what he had done wrong so he could improve next time.
He estimated roughly two days travel until KR 112 would reach relay station Epsilon.
It was still on the Matrix network, it still sent out all systems ok. But MK IV wanted to make sure it wasn't getting worn out.
The MHCM would not take lightly on an AI unit not taking care of the matrix relay network, especially if it was the only active unit.

MK IV stood in the "bridge" of the KR 112 in the office drone, the bridge being the room where the main AI core resides, he watched the small twig like plant in its pot upon a bedside table he'd taken into the room.
With a careful motion he took the light green plastic watering can designed to look like a flower and carefully gave the small plant some water.
He hoped it would blossom one day.
[/hider]